TPP Still Terrible For Everybody But Corporations

I remember when Rich Trumka was just a kid leading the UMW into one of its last great strikes.  He came up the traditional labor way: growing up in a union family in coal country, working in the mines, organizing a few men at a time, working UNION every single day of his life. The MBA smart asses who have been writing labor's obituary for 40 years don't understand and never will understand.  Which is why we have to follow Trumka into the fight yet again.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership was officially signed by the negotiating countries in Auckland a couple of days ago. This received almost no news coverage, although it will when it goes up for ratification in Congress.AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka reminds us why the TPP is so awful and something that we must demand our politicians vote against:

From the outset, the AFL-CIO provided detailed and substantive suggestions for improving this agreement and evidence to support our positions. On everything from labor enforcement to investment rules, we offered a path forward. Unfortunately, our policy recommendations were ignored, as were those from the environmental, consumer, public health, global development and manufacturing sectors. That’s what you get from secret negotiations driven by corporate and investor interests.

There are countless ways the TPP would be disastrous for working people. Here are a few of the most egregious.

After much talk about labor standards, the TPP falls woefully short. It retains the totally discretionary nature of enforcement and does nothing to streamline the process so labor cases will be addressed without delay, leaving workers with no assurance of improved conditions. The “consistency” agreements negotiated with Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei don’t add any responsibilities beyond the current labor chapter and give Vietnam five years to come fully into compliance, even though it will receive the benefits of the TPP immediately. There is no deal to address longstanding labor problems in Mexico that have not been remedied despite 20 years of efforts to enforce NAFTA.

The TPP would take a sledgehammer to American manufacturing. The auto rules of origin are so weak that a car or truck made primarily in China or another non-TPP country would still qualify for trade benefits. Popular “Buy American” rules are watered down, requiring the U.S. government to treat bidders from every TPP country as if they were American. Finally, the lack of any enforceable currency manipulation rules means foreign nations can continue to cheat U.S. companies and workers. These features make the TPP an outsourcing deal, not a trade deal.

To add insult to injury, more than 9,000 new foreign companies will be empowered to bypass U.S. courts and access a private justice system — investor-state dispute settlement — that allows them to hold U.S. federal, state and local government decisions ransom. Let that soak in for a minute. Wal-Mart’s Japan subsidiary could sue Seattle for denying a building permit. ExxonMobil’s Vietnamese affiliate could come after the United States for rules and regulations that protect our air and water.

The TPP is also a giveaway to Big Pharma, expanding monopoly rights that will allow drug companies to further drive up costs for patients. These rules are far worse than the ones in the Peru, Colombia and Panama deals negotiated by former President George W. Bush. Doctors Without Borders says the TPP would “jeopardize people’s access to affordable medicines.”

We’ve been down this road before. The Wall Street and Washington elite always tell us that this time will be different. The truth is these trade deals have ripped apart the fabric of our nation. We see the shuttered factories. We visit towns that look like they are stuck in the past. We talk to the workers who lost everything, only to be told they should retrain in another field — but Congress has been slow to fund and authorize those programs. From NAFTA to CAFTA to Korea and now the TPP, these agreements have continually put profits over people. By driving down our wages, they make our economy weaker, not stronger.

There is almost nothing good in this agreement for working people. It’s also worth noting that the labor movement in nations like Vietnam oppose the TPP as well, fearing it will make it much harder to improve conditions in their factories and sweatshops. The TPP is great if you are an elite of any of these nations or a corporate head, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. For the rest of us, such as those who want to protect our environment or labor conditions and don’t want those protections thrown away in an extra-legal court system or those of us who think that American workers who don’t have access to college educations should be able to have a good job that allows them to live a decent life or those of us who believe that Vietnamese and Malaysian workers need to have their rights expanded, the TPP is a complete disaster.

Unfortunately, because of President Obama’s support that is combined with key Democrats in west coast states with large ports that send and receive products to Asia, the TPP is almost certain to past. It would be nice if pressure was placed on relevant senators to make them fear for their political lives if they vote for the TPP, but between the 6-year election cycle for them and the lack of primary options from the left, there’s really little hope here. It was fast-track where the real decision was made. We will be living with the consequences for a long time.

Finally, the TPP is another in a seven decade series of defeats on major bills for organized labor. On everything from Taft-Hartley in 1947 to overturning parts of T-H in 1966 to the failure of a meaningful Humphrey-Hawkins full employment bill in 1978 to NAFTA to the TPP to many other labor bills, the reality is that organized labor has never had the political power to win or defeat bills that were inimical to its most dear interests. Even when labor had more power than it does today, the combination of Republicans and conservative (or pro-business, which is not always the same thing) Democrats was always enough to beat it, at least since 1938, when the Fair Labor Standards Act was the last comprehensive labor bill to become law in the United States. That’s a very long time.

Advice for Alison From Somebody Who Knows Coal Far Better Than She Ever Will

Run on progressive solutions to economic problems, and stop running away from the Democratic Party.

George Zornick at The Nation:

The midterm elections are twenty-seven days away, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has been keeping a relentless road schedule campaigning for Democratic candidates. One thing he’d like to see more of: talk about basic economic fairness issues.

“I think more populism, or more focus on the economic issues, would be helpful,” he told a small group of reporters at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, DC. “I think it would help drive turnout as well. I think the candidates that focus only on negative things, doing everything negative, have a real danger of having their base go flat.”

Trumka said that in talking to workers on the campaign trail, he frequently confronts a problem that has bedeviled Democrats in many past midterms: apathy. Union members wonder why it matters if they vote.

“They say that at the plant gate, at doors, on the telephone,” Trumka said. “I try to explain to them that the economy is not like the weather. Those that are in power, and those that want to be in power, want us to believe the economy is like the weather—there’s nothing you can do about it, so don’t bother. But the economy…it’s nothing but a bunch of rules. And those rules decide the winners and losers, and those rules are made by the men and women we elect. That’s why this election is important.”

No More Labor for Faux Democrats

Yet another reason for liberals and other Real Democrats to stop waiting for Daddy Democrat to rescue us, and get out there organizing house by house, voter by voter in our own neighborhoods.

From TPM:

Watch out, Democrats, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said on Friday. Your buddies in organized labor are looking to expand the friendship circle.

Trumka's speech at the National Press Club, billed as a major address by the union, recast the union's connection to politics as a year-round, national affair -- rather than the election-focused, battleground state strategy of the past. Trumka warned Democrats that labor would not always be at their side, suggesting more of the primary battles like the unsuccessful one that labor backed against former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) last year.

Trumka's main message to politicians, after a year in which labor has battled broad-based attacks in state legislatures across the country, was a simple one: you're either with us or you're against us.

"It doesn't matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside--the outcome is the same either way," he said in prepared remarks that he veered little from during the address. "If leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families' interests, working people will not support them."

Trumka's remarks as prepared for delivery here.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?

A SOTU for a Reality-Based Economy

Via Crooks and Liars, the State of the Union address President Obama should give Tuesday night:

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka made a speech this week at the National Press Club, aimed at what is expected to be an austerity plan in Obama's State of the Union address:

The question of how our political system treated our 9-11 heroes like Stan resonates still in this new year: What kind of country are we? A country of isolated individuals fending for themselves or a country with shared values and a shared vision? A country with scant resources, fading glory and no choices? Or a blessed nation with the potential to do right by its people and be a leader in the world?

The conventional wisdom in Washington and in statehouses around the nation is that we cannot afford to be the country we want to be. That could not be more wrong.

We can and should be building up the American middle class – not tearing it down. We should be honoring the heroes of 9-11, not turning them into scapegoats for a partisan political messaging operation. We should act like the wealthy, compassionate, imaginative country we are – not try to turn ourselves into a third-rate, impoverished "has-been." The labor movement hasn't given up on America – and we don't expect our leaders to either.

Last Friday in Cincinnati, Ella Hopkins and a group of her co-workers went out on a frigid night to stand in front of City Hall. Ella is a child care worker and I'm so glad that she is here today. She takes care of young children when their parents are at work. She nurtures our youth so they have the support they need and are in a safe environment to learn and grow. And for doing that job, the important job of caring for our children, the state of Ohio pays her, after taxes, about $450 a week. She stood in the cold last Friday to ask her new governor, John Kasich, to respect her freedom to have a union to improve her life and those of her co-workers. Here's what Kasich said: State workers like her are "toast."

You see, in the same week that he increased the salaries of his senior staff by more than 30 percent, the governor has made cracking down on Ella and other home care and child care workers his first priority.

Stan and Ella are my American heroes, the hard-working everyday champions who make America great, and their lives illuminate the choices facing our nation as we enter a fourth year of economic crisis. The choice between coming together as a nation or turning on each other. The choice, as Dr. Martin Luther King once said, between chaos and community. The choice between greed and solidarity.

But most of all, Stan and Ella remind us that while our political leaders wrestle with these questions, America's working people already know the answer. We are a nation that still has choices. We don't need to settle for stagnation and ever-spiraling inequality. We don't need to hunker down, dial back our expectations and surrender our children's hope for a great education, our parents' right to a comfortable retirement, our own health and economic security, our nation's aspiration to make things again – or our human right to advance our situation by forming a union if we want one. All these things are within the reach of this great country.

SNIP

We have a tax system that everyone knows is grossly unfair—allowing private equity billionaires like Pete Peterson to pay 15 percent rates while middle-class Americans pay 25 percent. We just agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich. Yet Washington behaves as if record economic inequality is a force of nature, and says we cannot fund the basic functions of government—let alone invest to build the infrastructure of the future.

We are still a wealthy country, with per capita income that puts us in the very top tier internationally. But in the last 20 years, 56 percent of all income gains went to the top 1 percent of Americans, and more than a third went to the top one-tenth of one percent. That is one person out of every thousand taking a third of all income gains here in the United States. Meanwhile, the bottom 90 percent made do with only 16 percent of income gains. That is why we all feel so poor – because too much of our national income went to too few people.

In this topsy-turvy world, the same leaders who fought so valiantly to cut taxes for the wealthy turn right around and lecture us about the imminent bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare. So let me get this straight: We need to slash retirement and health benefits for the elderly because we are on the brink of fiscal crisis. But we can afford to squander hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the super-rich. Only at the Mad Hatter's tea party does this make sense.

The truth is Social Security is financially one of the healthiest institutions in American life, and the most essential to our families' economic security.

When we are reduced to competing to cut spending instead of deciding how to compete in the world economy and secure our future, then we are having the wrong conversation.

SNIP

Next week the President of the United States will give his State of the Union address. The labor movement is ready for a call to action, a call to invest in our future, to create jobs, to be the country we can and must be. We are ready for vision, and we believe in the President's vision of a nation that is strong because we are just and true to our values. A vision for a national future founded on the profound truth that social justice and material prosperity are not competing values--they are necessary to each other. A truth that we have ignored as a country for a generation at a terrible cost.

And what is that future? Just this: In a globalized, high-tech world, when it often seems that change is the one constant in our lives, the real American dream is that if we work hard and do our part for each other, each of us can enjoy the economic security that allows us to live our lives with dignity and have hope for our future and for our children's future. This dream must be a reality in our time, and in our children's and grandchildren's time.

Read the whole wonderful, inspiring thing.

Meanwhile, Massive Job-Killing Trade Deal on the Table

While we're all freaking out over the kill-Social-Security-to-help-Paris-Hilton deal, the administration is working quietly behind the scenes to repeat the NAFTA catastrophe with South Korea.

From Firedoglake:

Statement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka On Korea Trade Deal

For more than a decade, the labor movement, environmental groups, development advocates and others have advocated for a new trade policy that is part of a more coordinated and coherent national economic strategy. The proposed U.S.-Korea trade deal does not live up to that model and does not contribute to a sustainable global future. We believe we must move towards a more democratic, sustainable and fair global economy with broadly shared prosperity for working people around the world. Reaching that goal will require deep-seated reforms in current trade policy, as well as in our own domestic labor laws and other policies.

We welcome the tremendous efforts by the Obama administration and particularly Ambassador Ron Kirk and his team to address the urgent concerns of autoworkers and auto companies with respect to market access, safeguard provisions and some non-tariff barriers. Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin and Ranking Member Dave Camp also pressed hard for key improvements in the auto provisions, and we appreciate their strong efforts. These newly negotiated provisions will give some much needed breathing room to the auto industry, and we appreciate the hard bargaining that was necessary to win these important changes.

However, the labor movement’s concerns about the Korea trade deal go beyond the auto assembly sector to a more fundamental question about what a fairer and more balanced trade policy should look like. In particular, the labor movement has consistently and for many years argued that the investment and government procurement provisions in the Korea deal will encourage off shoring. And despite the progress made in improving the labor chapter in 2007, it is clear that in both the United States and South Korea, workers continue to face repeated challenges to their exercise of fundamental human rights on the job – especially freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively. This deal does nothing to improve or strengthen the provisions negotiated by former President George W. Bush in these crucial areas. It is essential that both countries bring their labor laws and practice fully into compliance with international standards prior to implementation of the agreement. And for American workers to benefit from trade deals, we must strengthen U.S. labor law to harmonize social activity. Going forward, we hope to work closely with the Obama administration to address all of these concerns in any future deals,particularly the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

The Korea deal also fails to address the potential problem of currency manipulation and contains lax provisions on rule of origin (allowing up to 65% foreign content in autos eligible for the lower tariff treatment,in contrast to the EU-Korea agreement, which allows only 45% foreign content) and duty drawback (which disadvantages domestic parts production). These provisions will undermine both S. Korean and American workers. There is significant opposition by many S. Korean unions to the trade agreement, as the agreement fails to address key offshoring and outsourcing issues facing S. Korea. In fact, the weak offshoring protections and rule of origin make the agreement a back door for increasing offshoring to China and other countries from South Korea,as well as from the United States.

We are also concerned that the trade agreement leaves open the possibility that goods produced in the North Korean free trade zone, the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), could in the future gain access to the United States. We shouldn’t leave open the possibility of including these goods for two reasons: 1) grave concerns over the atrocious labor rights record in the KIC and 2) the impact on jobs and wages of the exports of these goods — produced at perhaps the lowest wage levels in the world.

In addition to much needed reforms in trade policy, the United States must implement a well coordinated industrial strategy that includes tax policy, infrastructure, skills development and technology investments to support a vibrant, growing and modern manufacturing sector.

The experiences of union members and working people with too many flawed trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization do not justify optimism that this deal will generate the promised new jobs. We’ve seen U.S. multinational companies take advantage of the investment and other corporate protections in past trade deals to shift production offshore, while maintaining access to the U.S. consumer market and undermining the jobs, wages and bargaining power of American workers.And the results have been catastrophic, with chronic and unsustainable trade deficits that sap economic growth and domestic job creation.

So long as these agreements fall short of protecting the broad interests of American workers and their counterparts around the world in these uncertain economic times, we will oppose them.

More Firedoglake coverage of the NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade deal.

It's Still the Jobs, Stupid

From Firedoglake:

Laura Flanders of GRITtv spoke with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka last week about jobs, Trumka’s union experience, and the future of the labor movement. Trumka is clearly aggravated about a lack of progress on jobs, saying that President Obama “is probably more pro-business than anybody in the past.” He also says “the worst thing this president could do” is replace Larry Summers with a CEO.

Trumka says that his top priority is “jobs, jobs, jobs,” and that creating them “isn’t brain surgery.” Notably, when Flanders asks Trumka about his thoughts for a replacement for Larry Summers, the AFL-CIO President challenges the administration on its pro-corporate policies.

“This administration has probably been more pro-business than anybody in the past. I mean, when it comes to tax breaks, all the things they’ve done – look at the bailouts of Wall Street. That was pretty pro-business as far as I can see. We have a number of candidates that we’ll be pushing who are pro-worker. The worst thing that this president could do is put somebody that is a CEO into that position and say, ‘Now we have to become pro-business.’ He would lose his entire base."

More GRITtv

"If You're Not For This Bill, You're Not For Jobs, Period."

There is one way and one way only to save the economy and incidentally maintain strong Democratic majorities in Congress this November: massive federal spending on jobs, jobs and more jobs.

David Dayen explains:

We have a $180 billion dollar jobs bill likely to get a vote this week. Very few people know about it. But labor has made it a litmus test.

SNIP

So basically, everything that’s been discussed over the last few months got mixed together into this bill. And some Democrats wanted to at least partially pay for this, so they got some tax loopholes closed:

So, what about the closing tax loopholes part? This is good. Really good.

Significant parts of the bill would be paid for by eliminating the tax incentives that encourage companies to ship American jobs overseas. The bill would prevent corporations from using current U.S. foreign tax credit rules to subsidize their foreign activities, and close a host of corporate tax loopholes that allow companies to avoid paying U.S. taxes through a variety of foreign tax credit schemes.

But here’s the best part. You know how working folks are required to pay regular income and employment taxes? Even if you are unemployed you likely have to pay the regular income tax on your unemployment insurance payments. But wealthy investment fund managers don’t. No siree. The fees they “earn” are taxed as so-called “carried interest”, a tax loophole that allows their income to be taxed at only 15 percent, as if it were capital gains.

Super-rich hedge fund managers, private equity fund managers and other high-flying Wall Street traders pay a much lower tax rate than working people do — even if you’re on unemployment! And taxpayers are left holding the bag for an estimated $2 billion a year in lost revenues due to this one loophole.

Well, they helped bring down the economy while making out like bandits — and now it’s high time they paid their fair share. This jobs bill would close their “carried interest” tax loophole.

This only partially covers the $180 billion price tag, which has made some Blue Dogs and fly-by-night fiscal conservatives nervous. But the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says that deficit concerns should not get in the way:

Concerns that the package is too large or that it should not be enacted unless it is fully paid for are misplaced. The bill includes three important but strictly temporary measures that will stimulate additional demand for goods and services and create jobs while the recovery is still struggling to gain traction; they are not permanent measures that add to the long-term budget deficit [...]

The impact of this jobs bill on the economy is strongly positive in the near term, while the impact on our long-term fiscal problem is insignificant.

Extending UI and COBRA, along with fiscal relief for the states, are targeted, temporary measures which increase demand in the short term, and offsetting the whole bill would essentially defeat the purpose. This is about as much of a “jobs bill” as we’ll get for the rest of the year, which is why labor has jumped aboard so strongly. Richard Trumka’s statement on this is nothing short of aggressive:

If you’re not for this bill, you’re not for jobs. Period.

And please, no more excuses about the budget deficit—unless and until you’re willing to make Wall Street pay its fair share to bring down the deficit. The people who are always saying “no” to jobs because of the deficit are often the same people who voted to squander our hard-earned budget surpluses so they could shower undeserved tax breaks on rich people during the Bush years. Apparently, spending money on rich people is perfectly okay, but investing in jobs for working class Americans sets off alarm bells.

Labor has basically made this bill central to their endorsement process for members of Congress.

In the midst of an unemployment crisis, measures like this are sorely needed, and we’ll see if Congress has enough sense to realize that this week.

Read the whole thing.

Then call or email your members of Congress here.

Tell them to stand up to the economy-killing deficit fearmongers, as Susie Madrak explains:

Every time the Republicans get deficit fever, our allegedly Democratic legislators fall back into the fetal position, muttering, "Please don't hurt me!" Oddly enough, this fever occurs only when there's a Democrat in the White House!

SNIP

With the national debt at its highest level in nearly 60 years, the question of whether to cut spending -- and if so, how -- is pitting liberals against conservatives, and Congress against the president. The White House has proposed a three-year freeze in programs unrelated to national security and warned House leaders Friday that it may go farther, targeting the Defense Department for cuts. Meanwhile, House leaders unable to agree on a long-term budget blueprint are considering other ways to signal fiscal toughness, including a one-year budget plan that would cut 2011 spending even more deeply than Obama's freeze.

This is so stupid as to defy belief. Instead of reassuring voters that, you know, several Nobel Prize-winning economists say we need to increase spending that stimulates the economy, our Fearless Democrats are falling right in line with the Tea Party's economic disinformation.

SNIP

Watch our brave Democrats run against the very things they've accomplished...

Read the whole thing.

Then call or email your members of Congress here.

Harnessing Working-Class Anger for Liberalism

Via Digby, the indispensable Rich Trumka beards the elitist lion in its Harvard den and explains how to return working-class anger to its roots as a force for liberal progress.

I am going to talk tonight about anger—and specifically the anger of working people. I want to explain why working people are right to be mad about what has happened to our economy and our country, and then I want to talk about why there is a difference between anger and hatred. There are forces in our country that are working hard to convert justifiable anger about an economy that only seems to work for a few of us into racist and homophobic hate and violence directed at our President and heroes like Congressman John Lewis. Most of all, those forces of hate seek to divide working people – to turn our anger against each other.

So I also want to talk to you tonight about what I believe is the only way to fight the forces of hatred—with a strong progressive tradition that includes working people in action, organizing unions and organizing to elect public officials committed to bold action to address economic suffering.

That progressive tradition has drawn its strength from an alliance of the poor and the middle class—everyone who works for a living. But the alliance between working people and public minded intellectuals is also crucial—it is all about standing up to entrenched economic power and the complacency of the affluent. It's an alliance that depends on intellectuals being critics, and not the servants, of economic privilege.

I am here tonight at the Kennedy School of Government to say that if you care about defending our country against the apostles of hate, you need to be part of the fight to rebuild a sustainable, high wage economy built on good jobs – the kind of economy that can only exist when working men and women have a real voice on the job.

Our republic must offer working people something other than the dead-end choice between the failed agenda of greed and the voices of hate and division and violence. Public intellectuals have a responsibility to offer a better way.

The stakes could not be higher. Mass unemployment and growing inequality threaten our democracy. We need to act—and act boldly—to strike at the roots of working people's anger and shut down the forces of hatred and racism.

Read the whole brilliant, inspiring thing.

Don't Count on Unions this November

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars has AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka's warning to President Obama:

Richard Trumka's not making an idle threat here. Union supporters don't have much to cheer about in this healthcare bill, and I don't think he's exaggerating the impact on the midterm elections. It's just that, for whatever reason, Obama's a lot more interested in the welfare of bankers than he is in workers:

President Obama sought on Monday evening to assuage organized labor's misgivings about the health-care overhaul, even as several key union leaders warned that the bill's final outlines could severely dampen their enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket in this year's elections.

Obama invited 10 labor leaders to the White House to discuss the negotiations aimed at reconciling the Senate and House bills, which are not heading in organized labor's direction in the three areas that it had identified as priorities. The final bill will not include the House's government-run insurance plan, or "public option"; it will probably include the Senate's new tax on high-cost health plans that could affect many union members; and its penalties for employers who do not provide insurance coverage will probably be closer to the more lenient terms in the Senate bill.

Three hours earlier, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a hard-edged speech at the National Press Club that discontent with the final bill, when combined with a general perception that Obama and Congress have been insufficiently populist in responding to the recession and financial crisis, could demoralize his members. The risk, he said, was a replay of the Democratic blowout in the 1994 elections, when, after the passage of NAFTA and other disappointments to unions, "there was no way to persuade enough working Americans to go to the polls when they couldn't tell the difference between the two parties."

"Now, more than ever, we need the boldness and the clarity we saw in our president during the campaign in 2008," he said.

Trumka stopped short of his September threat that the AFL-CIO might not support the final bill -- after all, he said, labor has been seeking health-care reform for decades. But individual members could sit on their hands. "A bad bill could have that kind of effect," he told reporters. "People could stay home. It could suppress votes."

The single greatest factor in November's election is going to be turnout. Democratic candidates can't win unless Democratic voters turn out in numbers close to 2008 levels - far higher than typical mid-term turnout. The single greatest turnout machine for Democratic candidates is unions.

There's no quicker path to oblivion for Democratic candidates than pissing off unions.

Back at the Unemployment Office ....

Regardless of what happens with health care reform, the real issue that will decide the 2010 elections continues to fester: the stagnant economy and rampant unemployment.

AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka talked to Firedoglake:

In Tuesday’s live Web chat, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka talked about what we need to do to fix our economy in both the short term and the long term—and touched on a vital, too-infrequently discussed issue: the need to end the stranglehold neoliberal economic thinking has on our politics.

Spurred by Milton Friedman and other economists, the neoliberal agenda is based on the radical principle that it’s markets, not people, that matter most. By nature, the neoliberal principle is hostile to collective bargaining, public regulation and all manner of ways to leverage community power to balance out the power of wealth.

Trumka sums up Friedman’s poisonous political philosophy:

He believed that anything that got in the way of the free market was something that was bad and should be eliminated. Any regulation on business is bad, so get rid of it; any tax on business is bad and distorts the marketplace, get rid of it. A union is bad and distorts the marketplace, so you have to get rid of it.

For the last 30 years, that’s the system that we’ve had here. It brought us to this crisis.

Trumka says the labor movement needs to get back at the forefront of economic policy, including monetary, fiscal and industrial policy. Unions need to lay out a clear new economic agenda that will work better and stand as an alternative to the markets-first, people-later neoliberal agenda.

That means building an economy in which the financial sector works on behalf of the real economy—not the other way around. It means listening to the needs of working families, not pundits and corporate shills who claim that good jobs with living wages and benefits are “bad for the economy.” It means we don’t let big bankers reap profits from destructive speculation and pass the risks and the consequences on to us. It means that wages, not debt, drives the economy.

Read the whole thing.

Labor Stands Firm on Public Option

Last week there was some speculation that the White House would try to force labor to back down on the public option and accept the Max Baucus' piece-of-shit Finance Committee health deform.

Not so much.

Stopping by the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC last night, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka discussed why the AFL-CIO supports health care reform legislation that makes sure Big Insurance doesn’t monopolize the health care field—and why the bill passed this week by the Senate Finance Committee, which does not include a public option, must be improved as it goes through Congress.

"Right now as your last guest [Wendell Potter, former Cigna executive] said, American insurance companies have a stranglehold on the health care industry. In 90 percent of the markets, they’re called highly concentrated, or there’s one or two companies that control them. As a result, profits have gone up 1,000 percent and premiums have gone up 300 percent. The only way to hold them accountable is to create competition and the only way you can create competition is with a robust public option."

Note to White House: It takes more than threats from Rahm Emmanuel to intimidate a guy who fought his way up from the coal mines.

Which Side Are They On?

The greatest threat to repug corporatist control of the economy is labor unions. The systematic destruction of labor unions in the '70s wasn't a byproduct of the stagflation, unemployment economy; it was the cause. Low wages, no benefits, income inequality - all track with the declining influence of the only thing standing between American workers and the serf economy Wall Street demands: labor unions.

Yes, they're still here and still fighting - now against anti-worker DINOs in Congress.

That barely scratches the surface of a list as long as my arm of anti-worker congressmen who have gotten large donations from labor unions. But... according to one of America's most brilliant and outstanding labor leaders, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumpka, that's all about to change.

Addressing the Sheet Metal Workers International Association in Las Vegas this week Trumpka indicated that the honeymoon between Labor and reactionary Democrats-- whether Blue Dogs or the DLC corporatists-- was coming to an end. As a Daily Kos diarist pointed out today, the Sheet Metal Workers union was the first "to have suspended all campaign donations to ALL Democratic candidates until the Employee Free Choice Act and a bill addressing real Health Care Reform are passed... In case anyone forgot, Labor Unions and not the health insurance industry or the Chamber of Commerce have been the biggest financial donor to the Blue Dogs and centrists in the Democratic Party."

Watch Trumka warning Blue Dogs and ConservaDems like Blanche Lincoln-- who now has an interesting grassroots opponent, a member of the Teamsters union-- and Max Baucus that the days of wine and roses are over.

As I wrote back in October, Trumka is a throwback to the days of John L. Lewis and Walter Reuther. It's no coincidence he came up through the United Mine Workers, where the workplace issues are still life and death. The sooner he takes the helm of the AFL-CIO, the better.

Rich Trunka Shows How to Overcome Anti-Obama Racism

Rich Trumka is a throwback. He would have stood tall in the days when Labor leaders like John L. Lewis and Walter Reuther were National Leaders with moral and political authority that rivaled that of Presidents.

Last week he displayed those leadership chops in a speech to the Steelworkers Union on dealing with anti-Obama bias among union voters.

This is an issue Obama supporters in Kentucky have to deal with every day, from coworkers sneering at Obama bumper stickers to "Democratic" Congressional and state house candidates refusing to endorse Obama for fear of alienating racist voters.

Not to mention the foreign magazines swooping into the racist-est hollers they can find to gather material for pointing and laughing at the stupid, sub-human hicks.

Note to Economist reporters: You didn't have to shit all over our state; we've had indoor plumbing here for years.

Oddly enough, some of those Whitesburg natives the Economist exploited are current and former coal miners who were probably among those 26 years ago who voted into the United Mine Workers Presidency a young firebrand named Rich Trumka.

Trumka knows the hardscrabble whites of coal country. He knows how they think, he knows what's really important to them, and high-powered AFL-CIO officer he may be now, he knows how to reach them.



Kathy G., who first posted the video of Trumka's speech, wrote:

It's powerful stuff. After watching this, I understood why Trumka is one of the leading figures in the American labor movement. He pulls off something very tricky here: he names the racist opposition to Obama for what it is, but not in an accusatory, guilt-mongering way. I think it's crucial that Obama supporters speak openly about the racism that Obama faces, in such a way that causes the people who have racist thoughts about him feel at least a wee bit guilty about it. Yet at the same time, we don't want to get all superior and self-righteous about it, because that's a turn-off.

I think Trumka strikes just the right balance in this speech. He calls out the racism for what it is, but doesn't say that those who harbor racist feelings are necessarily bad people. He frames racism as an evil, but also as something that can be overcome. In short, he appeals to folks' better angels, which I think is a much more effective way to go than castigating them would be. It's a moving speech, and he's an impressive rhetorician and speaker.

Watch it. Show it to everyone you know, and forward it to a bunch of people you don't know.

h/t Steven Benen at Washington Monthly.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.